News about news

The news out of Charlottesville, Va., where a move to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee was met with protests by right-wing, extreme-right-wing and white-supremacist activists, and counter-protests by left-wingers, has caused chaos not only for the U.S. president and politicians, but right-wing media in Canada as well. Ezra Levant, the supreme commander at The Rebel, wrote a memo disassociating himself with the “alt-right” over this, believing the group had gone too far. But even that wasn’t enough for several contributors who decided to leave this week:

Brian Lilley, Levant’s former colleague at the Sun News Network, announced his departure from The Rebel on Monday. Levant, classy guy that he is, suggested Lilley was being pressured by Bell Media and others (Lilley has a show on Bell’s Ottawa talk radio station), which Lilley said was not the case. Lilley’s interview with As It Happens suggests the two didn’t part on good terms.

At the CRTC

The federal government has decided to ask the CRTC to review its licence renewal decisions for major commercial TV broadcasters — Bell Media, Corus, Rogers, Quebecor and V. At issue are two elements of those decisions that have become controversial: standardizing a special quota called “programs of national interest” (defined as long-form documentary, drama, scripted comedy and specific Canadian award shows that celebrate Canadian creative talent) at the lowest minimum the English groups had, and eliminating a special requirement for Corus’s Séries+ and Historia that required expenditures on original first-run French-language content. The actual order hasn’t been posted yet, so Joly’s tweet is actually the most detailed thing we have to go on right now.

TV

The CRTC has approved Rogers’s request to pull the licence for G4, formerly G4techTV. News of the channel’s demise came out last month, but the letter from Rogers confirms the station will shut down Aug. 31 and they don’t plan to just rebrand it as something else. The American G4 was shut down in 2014. G4 in Canada been operating as a zombie channel for a while now.

Bell Media’s French specialty channels — Vie, D, Investigation, Vrak and Z — are all on free preview until Sept. 18, on Videotron, Cogeco and Bell, and probably others.

The Rogers Cup semifinal match featuring Canadian Denis Shapovalov was a hit for both Sportsnet and TVA Sports, which had about half a million each on average, and a peak above 700,000 each. For both, it was the most watched tennis match ever.

Jay and Dan, or rather “SC WITH JAY AND DAN PRESENTED BY TIM HORTONS”, will start Sept. 4 at midnight. Be warned, “the Tim Hortons sponsorship also includes custom product onset integrations”

Sportsnet 650 in Vancouver has announced its play-by-play team for Vancouver Canucks broadcasts: Brendan Batchelor and Corey Hirsch. Batchelor had previously done play-by-play for the WHL’s Vancouver Giants, and Hirsch was part of the national Sportsnet NHL team on TV. The station launches Sept. 4.

Online

News about people

Tina Tenneriello, who recently filled in for Joanne Vrakas at Breakfast Television, has been hired at City Montreal. But it’s not as Vrakas’s maternity leave replacement. Rather, she’s been added to the roster of video journalists for the new local evening newscasts set to begin in 2018. Until she starts here she’s training and working for City nationally, including for the Edmonton and Winnipeg newscasts starting next month. Cora MacDonald, who like Tenneriello cut her teeth reporting at CJAD, was hired earlier for the team.